Funniest alternate history ever

W

WolfBear

Well-known member
What are some examples of the funniest alternate history ever? Please allow me to start:

NSFW warning:

WI: Female Hitler

The PoD for this scenario is that Hitler is born female instead of male. She's still Hitler, though.
www.alternatehistory.com

David T
An old post of mine from soc.history.what-if (on the theme "what if some famous men in history had been born women instead?"):

"Adele Hitler--her parents wanted her to marry a civil servant, but Adele was a rebellious girl, thought she was an artist, ran off to Vienna to join the avant-garde. There's a fine Expressionist portrait of her by Kokoschka. Later she went to Munich, where she was first female commissar of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. She was jailed for this, and in jail wrote her famous memoir *My Struggle.* When released she plunged into the Dadaist scene in Munich and produced such bizarre works of "art" as "Night of Broken Glass" (a sculpture of broken glass), "Final Solution" (featuring a dissolving corpse),and "Barbarossa" (I won't go into details, but "Barbarossa" means red beard, and the "beard" in question was pubic...) In 1923 she was finally confined to an insane asylum, where she committed suicide in 1945. Recently there have been attempts to revive her reputation, especially by the British feminist art historian Daphne Irving, who claims that Adele's insanity is a "myth." "
Click to expand...
 
Sicarius started writing The Stars At Night: A Texas Timeline in 2011, and then it sort of died a year later. Too bad, because it was hilarious. You can still find it on AH.com, although the sometimes hilarious images have unfortunately 404'd.

I remember laughing hard. Of course, this was a while ago. No idea if it still holds up.
 
Skallagrim said:
Sicarius started writing The Stars At Night: A Texas Timeline in 2011, and then it sort of died a year later. Too bad, because it was hilarious. You can still find it on AH.com, although the sometimes hilarious images have unfortunately 404'd.

I remember laughing hard. Of course, this was a while ago. No idea if it still holds up.
Click to expand...

What's the story behind it?
 
Skallagrim said:
A drunkard and a bunch of rampaging pigs accidentally cause Texas to remain independent.

That's not a pithy one-liner. That's literally the premise.
Click to expand...

Pretty cool! Might be worth for me to eventually check it out! :)

I suppose that a TL where Trump won reelection in 2020 might be one of the funniest out there if it will include screenshots of his various Tweets from after 2020. But of course, we could say that our TL's successful Donald Trump 2016 presidential bid is itself something that looks like alternate history but actually isn't!
 
Butch R. Mann said:
There was a TL where Ayn Rand, after having a few drinks with Ron Hubbard, went filibustering in Katanga, to create objectivist paradise.
Click to expand...
WolfBear said:
That TL should have been called "Libertarian Dreams Meet Cold, Harsh African Reality"! :D
Click to expand...
Of course, that TL could also be called "Straw Manning It Up In Africa". To be clear, I'm pretty certain that an Objectivist state would fail even under the very best of possible circumstances [1], but that TL makes exactly zero effort to accurately portray the ideology. It's basically a Chick Tract, which I always find pretty disappointing.

---------------------------------

[1] The fact of the matter is that the Objectivists are at odds with each other even now, without being remotely close to running so muh as a petting zoo, let alone a country. My faith in their ability to act constructively is therefore limited.
 
There's always Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes Trilogy?
... however that's more just incredibly stupid. Yes immensely silly, but more tragic than funny.
 
WolfBear said:
What are some examples of the funniest alternate history ever? Please allow me to start:

NSFW warning:

WI: Female Hitler

The PoD for this scenario is that Hitler is born female instead of male. She's still Hitler, though.
www.alternatehistory.com
Click to expand...

Skallagrim said:
Sicarius started writing The Stars At Night: A Texas Timeline in 2011, and then it sort of died a year later. Too bad, because it was hilarious. You can still find it on AH.com, although the sometimes hilarious images have unfortunately 404'd.

I remember laughing hard. Of course, this was a while ago. No idea if it still holds up.
Click to expand...

The Al Gore Presidency and RFK:If he wasn't killed
 
WolfBear said:
What are some examples of the funniest alternate history ever? Please allow me to start:

NSFW warning:

WI: Female Hitler

The PoD for this scenario is that Hitler is born female instead of male. She's still Hitler, though.
www.alternatehistory.com
Click to expand...
There is guardian 54 on fanfiction with his series of stories of super- Canada led by old super hag who still look young and sexy.
In one super-Canada defeat Hitler instead of USA/becouse USA do not wanted fight Germany/ ,capture Yamato and Musashi and made them part of canadian navy,then defeat Sralin ,capture Moscov,and super-Hag personally kill Sralin.

But,becouse author was lazy,soviet union still existed and keep part of Europe.Canadians help Vietnam fight USA and defeat its Navy,later we see bad christians murdering peaciful leftist,so canadians must help them.
In last chapters we have aliens who come and kill all remaining christians,and canadians beat them after that.Aliens was from either Halo or Mass Effect.

Very funny story,since both USA and christians,especially catholics,are always beaten,author must hate both.
Maybe some bad american priest hurt him/her?
 
Complete strawman timelines tend to make for the most hilarious ones. I am reminded of 2 in particular, whose names are lost to me but whose premises stick out. One a conservative strawman by a liberal, and the other a liberal strawman by a conservative.

The Liberal Strawman one is a Al Gore presidency timeline where Al Gore behaves pretty much like a SJW, which is kinda of interesting given I am pretty sure it was written in the late 2000's before they were really a thing, mismanaging many things in his first year by trying to be very liberal and with a memorable scene where a USSS agent that rushes to tell him about 9/11 is lambasted for trying to stop his speech on a climate conference and ordered back to wait until he is done which I found a really funny as a way to really drive home the "this guy is a self absorbed weirdo" point.

The Conservative Strawman one was far, FAR worse in that instead of just being a random timeline online it was actually made into a book (whose name I can't remember) and it has Sarah Palin winning the 2008 election and then the USA just becomes a Theocracy, Fox News is the only news company allowed (Renamed something like Fox and Faith) and the US goes literal Holocaust on the gays before a revolution eventually happens. Absolute toppest of keks.

And finally another book, this one from the 70's about a Nazi Victory timeline. Except it was written by someone who I assume had no idea what the fuck the Nazis were other than "cool uniforms" because the idea of Nazism in the book matches nothing from the real world. Including legalized child sex slavery and openly homoerotic athletic worship and random shit like that.
 
Sobek said:
Complete strawman timelines tend to make for the most hilarious ones. I am reminded of 2 in particular, whose names are lost to me but whose premises stick out. One a conservative strawman by a liberal, and the other a liberal strawman by a conservative.
Click to expand...

You know, I wonder if this is one of the reasons why AH isn't taken seriously by a lot of people?

That is, less thoughtful authors just assuming that tweaking some PoD gives them license to jump off the deep end and crank out the craziest, zaniest, most heavily plot-armored scenarios that anyone has ever written. (Loony Nazi-wank counterfactuals, like Wolfenstein and The Man in the High Castle, come to mind right about now, though I suppose they're not what's meant by "funny" here.)
 
It would certainly explain some of the issues. A lot of bad AH is basically just that, or in some cases a excuse to wank a nation or ideology. Actual well thought examples are a bit harder to come out and haven't had that much of a impact on Pop-Culture.

The Man In The High Castle at least has a grandfather clause that some of the things we now know about why that sort of timeline would have been impossible were either hard to find or in some cases still classified in the 1960's when it was written.

By the way, found the absurd Nazi book one. It's even worse. Children are encouraged to torture and kill small animals is the sort of nonsense you need to be going out of your way to NOT do research.

 
Sobek said:
It would certainly explain some of the issues. A lot of bad AH is basically just that, or in some cases a excuse to wank a nation or ideology. Actual well thought examples are a bit harder to come out and haven't had that much of a impact on Pop-Culture.

The Man In The High Castle at least has a grandfather clause that some of the things we now know about why that sort of timeline would have been impossible were either hard to find or in some cases still classified in the 1960's when it was written.

By the way, found the absurd Nazi book one. It's even worse. Children are encouraged to torture and kill small animals is the sort of nonsense you need to be going out of your way to NOT do research.

Click to expand...

So, basically, a regime so dark and twisted, even Hitler and his cronies would grimace?

Wow. At that point, I honestly wonder if the author was doing okay when he was writing this, if you know what I mean.
 
WolfBear said:
Pretty cool! Might be worth for me to eventually check it out! :)

I suppose that a TL where Trump won reelection in 2020 might be one of the funniest out there if it will include screenshots of his various Tweets from after 2020. But of course, we could say that our TL's successful Donald Trump 2016 presidential bid is itself something that looks like alternate history but actually isn't!
Click to expand...

I wonder if Trump will get unbanned from Twitter if he will win in 2024 in real life. Trump losing in 2020 was the best of all possible worlds since we got January 6 (thus further showing Trump's lack of commitment to the rule of law and to free and fair elections), Trump's second impeachment, and a lot of Afghan refugees moving to the US, joining the Persian refugees who are already here.
 
Zyobot said:
So, basically, a regime so dark and twisted, even Hitler and his cronies would grimace?

Wow. At that point, I honestly wonder if the author was doing okay when he was writing this, if you know what I mean.
Click to expand...

According to the Wikipedia article he was a "vocal critic of the Vietnam War" and the book was also supposed to be a "critique of the USA" so my guess is he was just going for shock value at this point.
 
Sobek said:
According to the Wikipedia article he was a "vocal critic of the Vietnam War" and the book was also supposed to be a "critique of the USA" so my guess is he was just going for shock value at this point.
Click to expand...

More like a critique based on a hysterical leftist’s insane fever dreams, if you ask me.

It’s one thing to vocally oppose the Vietnam War, it’s another to write a novel-length deconstruction of the US as evilly Kafkaesque as… well, that. (Not sure what the Nazis have to do with the “critique” side of his writing, either, but whatever.)

Anyway, as far as more funny AH scenarios go, there is this one TL idea on Alternate Timelines where a US President has a secret affair with Kim Jong Un’s sister after she wrests power. Needless to say, the Secret Service and their North Korean equivalents will be hard-pressed to keep it under wraps for long, so whatever plausibility it lacks is more than made up for in comedic value! :ROFLMAO:

Sadly, it hasn’t been turned into a full TL yet, though I hope they expand on their base idea eventually.
 
Zyobot said:
A critique based on a hysterical leftist’s insane fever dreams, that is.

It’s one thing to vocally oppose the Vietnam War, it’s another to write a novel-length deconstruction of the US as evilly Kafkaesque as… well, that. (Not sure what the Nazis have to do with the “critique” side of his writing, either, but whatever.)

Anyway, as far as more funny AH scenarios go, there is this one TL idea on Alternate Timelines where a US President has a secret affair with Kim Jong Un’s sister after she wrests power. Needless to say, the Secret Service and their North Korean equivalents will be hard-pressed to keep it under wraps for long, so whatever plausibility it lacks is more than made up for in comedic value! :ROFLMAO:

Sadly, it hasn’t been turned into a full TL yet, though I hope they expand on their base idea eventually.
Click to expand...

Imagine a US President telling the North Korean Iron Lady "I want to do a nuclear explosion inside of you!" :D ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back
Top